The United States houses more human beings in prisons than any other country, both in terms of actual numbers and in relation to population size. The U.S. prison population began to grow dramatically in the 1970s. Professor Daniel DAmico examines the data behind the alarming increase in the number of prisoners in the United States and finds that much of the growth in the last 40 years has been driven by the war on drugs.

From 1980 to 1990, the total U.S. prison population more than doubled. In that same time, the proportion of people in prison for nonviolent drug crimes rose from 7.5 percent to 24 percent. Prof. DAmico says this statistic actually understates the influence of the drug war on the prison population because drug prohibition also increases violent crime by leading to the formation of gangs and cartels. By 2000, the prison population had nearly doubled again, but the proportion of prisoners due to drug-related offenses remained similar.

democratic rule in big cities....they don’t deal with criminals. Now if a bit of actual real justice got dished out as deterrents, you might somewhere but the criminals know the system is gamed and they can get away with most things, the criminals get locked up and they know prison is a cakewalk these days as well as them having more rights than victims.

Take away death penalty.
Lock people away for a long time for seemingly petty offenses.
Lock illegals up rather than deport them and have a decent border defense system so as to keep them out.
When people get sent to prison, give them all the libraries, free schooling, weight lifting, flat screen TVs, drugs etc etc to keep them ‘calm’.

The great (not quite ‘late’) Mayor For Life of Washington DC once made the observation ‘ When asked why ‘they’ wouldn’t shut down the DC Jail/Prison in Lorton VA (some 50 miles away) ‘hizonnor’ said (to the effect)
“If we didn’t send them to Lorton some of these boys would NEVER get out of southeast DC”
Other GREAT Marionisms
“Why wouldn’t they want to go to jail? They have everything there they don’t have at home”.
“DC is a great city - take away the murders”.
“THE BITCH set me up”.
Which, BTW, was probably the first run in he had that HE didn’t intentionally break any laws....YES, she did set him up...he may (probably would) have partaken when he was finished but he was obviously only after a booty call and she wouldn’t let him till he took her ‘30 pieces of silver’.

I still think it would have been ‘great’ when that female FBI agent delivered the ‘goodies’ to the room, IF he would have grabbed her and called security on her.....

Of course I enjoy pulling ONE wing off a fly so he runs himself to death in a circle.

6
posted on 01/13/2013 10:54:57 AM PST
by xrmusn
(6/98 "It is virtually impossible to clean the pond as long as the pigs are still crapping in it")

“Prohibition-based policies have led to a rise in drug-related violence, prison overcrowding, and an increase in HIV epidemics. The Open Society Foundations support organizations that put forward alternatives.”

“The Open Society Foundations support drug policy reform efforts in the United States that address the health, safety, and social harms associated with drug use and drug markets, while reducing the high levels of incarceration, racial injustice, and violation of individual rights associated with current drug policy.”

Perhaps you did not know that you are, in effect, a useful tool of Open Society Institute when you post things arguing for drug legalization.

Considering FR is not a website that supports Open Society and globalist elites, nor is it supported by OSI, I fail to see the wisdom in promoting OSI strategies here that are designed to destroy American morals, society and prosperity.

Because prison isn’t prison any more, just an extension of gangland that continues to operate on the indside. Nowadays, guards wear body armor and prisoners can get college educations. Our prison system was undone by polluting the minds of thought leaders in America with the idea of taking prisoner “rights” to the extreme. Most thought leaders in America are now indoctrinated leftist or globalist (or both) robots (whether they know it or not).

Interesting thanks redreno.- "people in prison for nonviolent drug crimes" - Someone I know, used to work with state prisoners said that everyone of them claimed they were not guilty of their conviction [for one reason or another] but a minute later would talk of the crimes they did and got away with. He said he heard this often. So when you hear of nonviolent offenders remember some just didn't get caught being violent.

14
posted on 01/13/2013 11:14:03 AM PST
by virgil283
( *- Never give the devil a ride. He will always want to drive.-*)

Two things - the myth of the “non-violent drug user languishing away in prison” is just that - a myth. I don’t believe for one second that there are any significant number of people doing time because they decided to fire up a joint or a bong. What I do think is that people who are criminally inclined also enjoy their recreational drugs. Those that say if we only legalized X - we’d have half as many people in prison - are probably themselves smoking X. It just ain’t so, in my opinion.

Secondly, it’s objectively true that crime statistics (which you can believe or take with a grain of salt) show that violent crime as gone down over the course of the decades. Some of that is probably due to demographics - as a rule younger people commit more crimes than older ones. But also some of this is due to incarceration of violent offenders.

To me it seems like you can have empty prisons and dangerous streets or you can have full prisons and comparatively safer streets. While nothing is all or none, all black or all white, as a general rule the more offenders you incarcerate, the fewer crimes you will have. It just makes sense. Where you draw the line is of course open to question, but relatively speaking there will be a correlation.

Prisons in general have become like a form of institutionalization of the welfare system, with built-in
entitlements never to be reduced (except for Joe Arpaio)
or threatened with extinction. It’s evolved disgracefully into a hothouse for continued criminality and a perfect meet and greet arena for future criminality. It is also a lucrative taxpayer funded enterprise and industry for those involved in new prisons and the big bucks involved in the maintainence of existing prisons. It is also another area, like everything else is this unruly land of ours, where we will NEVER get anything like an honest discussion of what is wrong, what went wrong, and how disgraceful has been our avoidance of coming to terms with the real social, moral and economic costs of maintaining so many people in these ‘warehouses’ , where the REAL and TRUE objectives should be both the redemption of souls and the moral and practical rebuilding of shattered and socially dangerous identities.
The question “why is it so large?” is the wrong focus, and that’s a question that has led to the practical solution of
automatic release of still-unreconstructed people into a society where the easiest thing for them to do for
“re-entry” is to return to a life of crime.

George Soros thanks you for helping with his drug legalization efforts.

What part of the Constitution authorizes the WOD's, the single most destructive war in history that has eroded our basic rights.

What war on anything has ever been declared victorious and ended?

Not one, The war on poverty had been going on since 65 at cost of 11-13 trillion flushed down the toilet with no end in site, in fact it is expanding.

The WOD in 73? has cost untold trillions and the destruction of 4th amendment rights, SWAT teams breaking down doors in the middle of the night many times at wrong addresses with no recourse from the victims, etc....all based on "informants"

The war on terror......will go on forever....are you seeing a pattern here?

BTW, how did that war on alcohol work out?

It worked out great didn't it, FOR the Government that is.

And before you start with the libertarian BS, I am not advocating legalizing drugs, what I am saying is that there are many things that are illegal yet there is no "war" on them.

23
posted on 01/13/2013 11:50:54 AM PST
by Las Vegas Ron
(Medicine is the keystone in the arch of socialism)

Because the illegal drug industry pays its workers well.

Of course, LVR; big government is not good - welfare should be eliminated, only Depts should be State, War, Justice and perhaps a few real basic agencies lumped into Interior. Perhaps 10% of the bureaucracy that we have today.

SWAT teams, IMHO, are not the way to go. It’s exciting perhaps for people who enjoy such things, but suspects could be picked up much in much easier and safer ways.

There should be no Federal money going to States for anything.

It’s not the sellers that should be sought so earnestly, but the users. Start with $500 fine and go up for repeat offenders. It should be treated like public drunkenness in terms of jail time, no lengthy term, just to sober up like that guy on Andy Griffith. The fines keep going up for repeat offenses, and fines can’t be gotten away from. The system should be designed to make being a drug user costly. Aggressively hand out those fines, the same way they do traffic tickets, with all revenue going back to taxpayers as a refund. The sellers will disappear when the buyers disappear.

Murder is a crime that should not be backed off on, and LE should spend much of their resources tracing and tracking and knowing what is going on in their locales. Other than that, though they are committing a crime by selling, sellers are supplying a demand and it’s the demand that needs to be reduced, not the supply, in order to rid our nation of this vile waste.

Calling something a war that is not a war, I agree, is not smart and not good. The war on terror avoids the best course of action regarding security, which is to recognize that islam needs to be eliminated from the U.S. as the murderous cult that it is. Not eliminating it will lead to islamization of the U.S. It’s a simple choice and the correct answer is a simple remedy for most of our security issues, but it’s difficult to do now because few can distinguish between the true faith of the Bible and a murderous cult.

Murder is a crime that should not be backed off on, and LE should spend much of their resources tracing and tracking and knowing what is going on in their locales. Other than that, though they are committing a crime by selling, sellers are supplying a demand and its the demand that needs to be reduced, not the supply, in order to rid our nation of this vile waste.

That's huge endevour, throughout history man has used drugs to escape reality. Opium dens and its use, e.g., has been noted for thousands of years....still is.

Truth be told, alcohol is just a legal version of it....not to mention heavily taxed like tobacco.

36
posted on 01/13/2013 2:08:16 PM PST
by Las Vegas Ron
(Medicine is the keystone in the arch of socialism)

Thought you might quote a different statistic. Sometime in the last few years, either the WaPo or NYT had an article pondering the deep mystery of why, with crime rates dropping, we still kept large numbers of people in prison. They simply could see no connection between large numbers of criminals locked away and the streets becoming safer.

A large number of people in prison is not in itself a bad thing. The best cure for recidivism is capital punishment, but long prison terms at least delay it.

41
posted on 01/13/2013 4:53:37 PM PST
by Cincinnatus.45-70
(What do DemocRats enjoy more than a truckload of dead babies? Unloading them with a pitchfork!)

the dirty little secret is that petty crimes don’t go to a jury but usually the perpetrator is offered a plea bargain for a lesser charge. One of the favorite charges is drug related crime, which are easier to prove (when drugs are found on a guy) than going to court and getting someone to testify against them for the real crime of assualt and battery or theft (especially since often these witnesses fear retaliation and don’t show up).

I also have to think of the decision made in the 60s that mental institutions were bad. As a result “insane asylums” were closed and all the crazies were let go on the streets.

We now have a huge potion of the prison population that can only be described as mentally ill.

This is also the problem we are dealing with right now with mentally illl people getting fire arms. The laws changed so that no matter how whacked out a person is ... no matter how obviously unhinged .... you cannot be taken in until you commit a crime.

Adam Lanza, a raving maniac, had he lived, would now be in the prison population. So we have fewer lunatic asylums and much larger prisons IMO.

It makes for a handy argument (”if we’d only legalize drugs our prisons would be half as full”) but it makes as much sense as so many other arguments made in the political arena - pick your favorite one - you can raise revenue by raising taxes, if guns were illegal criminals would gladly give them up, welfare doesn’t create a dependency class, if we only gave up our weapons our enemies would give up theirs etc. etc.

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